


The Lesson of Poetry

by Gail Riordan (lferion)



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Challenge Response, Footnotes, Heavy on the literary reference, M/M, Poetry, Pre-Canon, Romance, counted word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-08-26
Updated: 1999-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:57:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/Gail%20Riordan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A love letter attempting to answer the question: Of what use is a library of poetry to a Jedi?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lesson of Poetry

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a response to the Keeper's Challenge - 800 words utilizing the 'kept' thing(s). As the 'Custodian in residence of Qui-Gon's library of poetry, this really was a challenge to write. This is precisely 800 words - 80 lines of 10 words each of (mostly) blank verse. Hyphenated words count as one. And, while this is not a story, per se, it does have a through line.
> 
> Ambiance: Bruckner's 3rd Symphony, Brahms' 4th Symphony.
> 
> Credit for inspiration goes to BlackRose, for everything, but JAOA &amp; 'Ceremonies' in particular; Hth, for 'Conquest'; Kirby Crow, for 'The Bitter Glass'; Mercutio, for 'Walk Softly &amp; Carry a Big Lightsaber'; SarahQ, for 'Essay on Passion';and WriteStuff, for everything, but 'Nomenclature' blew me away.
> 
> Dedication: For Destina, 'cause she asked, though I suspect she didn't quite know what she was gonna get :-) And special chocolate-covered Jedi to whoever it was thought up this particular challenge.
> 
> Disclaimer: All things TPM belong to George Lucas. All thereferenced poems and works belong to their respective authors. No harm, no foul.
> 
> Footnotes and references found at the end.

How to shape in words the lessons learned in silence?  
How make ink express what heart and will have known?

What lessons, Padawan, have I yet left to teach you?  
What mastery or skill is mine that is not yours  
In seed potential, if not sturdy growth; but this perhaps:  
That our souls desire poetry, and will not thrive without.

Will and wit combine to make a match, tinder, flint  
To steel of other minds, eyes, hearts. In that intersection  
Comes conflagration - the fire in which the worlds were made  
And all desires formed: In the Beginning was the Word1.  
And Word made flesh before me now - no printed book  
But very truth made manifest to touch, to know, enfold  
In arms embrace and be known in return, entire selves -  
We speak with all the fire of creation, and destroy  
To make and build anew. And thus compelled we strive --  
Tame the lightning, give glass speech, make sentience of sand24  
And Live and Love; We shall not cease from exploration2  
Study, but touch. Learn and later know3. Fly outward, flung  
On wings of words, to spiral round &amp; know oneself,  
But not unchanged, untouched, unscarred: all edged this brilliant blade -  
And tongue &amp; wit are weapons4, both terrible and fair:  
For words are knives to flense and flay the soul5 \--  
Revealing &amp; concealing passion's core, desire's heart, dark and light.  
No remedy but knowledge for those bitter, self-wrought wounds6.  
This is the poetry of agony, distress, the warring mind -  
Conflicted flesh that must to resolution come or sundered be.  
Endurance not enough; but know, what others found may serve  
A present need as well: to forge poetry from pain  
And summon up from sorrow the music like a sword7.

But this the least of inspiration's art; for merry too  
And joyous, it burns, igniting the fire in the rose2 \--

The poetry of movement - the silk and steel of flesh8  
Muscle shifting, sliding over bone: the body's graceful, purposed dance -  
Weaponed, naked, clothed or sheathed, in battle art or love,  
Velvet over iron, water washing stone, earth and fire joined  
&amp; aching to express what air cannot; with thought o'ercome  
All of time and space reduced to Now and Here --  
This edge balanced moment, this look, this touch, this breath!  
This consummation so devoutly to be wished9, a death indeed -  
That life brings forth, and rises up renewed; passion then  
Within a word contained, once known, breathed in Lover's ear,  
Tasted on the tongue - the poetry of love made live.

Transformed by trust, made fierce and eager, now called Appetite -  
The poetry of lust, of ecstasy, desire, where rhythm,  
Scansion, rhyme are all subsumed within the desperate, driving need  
To be consumed, made one and whole with the beloved -  
tenderly clasp me please master i take me to Thee 10, -  
Or cradled close and hard, to know the lily folded,  
Slipt within thy bosom, lost in thee11. (Oh sacred trust!)  
And thus pierced, intertwined, to feel The flutter of life  
Beating against the blade/ The red steel edge/ Of silence12.

There is poetry in silence, did you know? Listen then  
With eyes and nerves and breath to catch the speech  
Of stone and dreaming bronze - How quiet here, and still13 -  
Slow measures shaped by time, made real again in trust.  
Can you see the hidden edges? What lies about us  
Innocent as grass, lavished in measures of light upon us:  
Burning in memory, singing us to sleep, awakening our eyes14?  
The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower15

And do you know that every poet bleeds in words?  
Desperate to touch and to be touched, be heard, known --  
Oh, is there an ear, an eye for wisdom  
That will perceive the soul of what I needs must say16?  
For memory wants words, to engage all, heart and mind,  
Communion with the intellect and soul - fire and rose together2.  
Our will creates our focus, and focus determines our reality17  
Distilled from pain and pleasure, known and seen, all art  
Combines to further brighter light, all love to greater love.

Remembered words contain those precious things too deep or high  
or Solitaire/ To bear with ease the touch/ Of hand  
or Heart or mind's caress18. Books, Kinsmen of the Shelf19  
Stand ward and guard o'er all the heart might say.

Our Order preaches prudence, no passionate desire but smoothed, serene.  
Yet light _will_ shine, and I will always know  
How it felt to fall from high solitude into true humanity  
For no reason greater than that you asked me to20  
And when night comes, (When you are old and grey21),  
Will stars not shine despite our blindness, and the memory  
of touch hold true even in that Hour of Lead?22  
For we are "Together, O Beloved, Forever, always and now."23

* * *

Footnotes and Attributions

All poems &amp; works copyright their respective authors, editors, heirs or assigns.

(1) The Bible - Gospel of John 1:1 (No particular version)

(2) Four Quartets - Little Gidding (section V), T.S. Eliot. T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909 - 1950, page 145.

We shall not cease from exploration  
And the end of all our exploring  
Will be to arrive where we started  
And know the place for the first time.  
Through the unknown, remembered gate  
When the last of earth left to discover  
Is that which was the beginning;  
As the source of the longest river  
The voice of the hidden waterfall  
And the children in the apple-tree  
Not known, because not looked for  
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness  
Between two waves of the sea.  
Quick now, here, now, always--  
A condition of complete simplicity  
(Costing not less than everything)  
And all shall be well and  
All manner of thing shall be well  
When the tongues of flame are in-folded  
Into the crowned knot of fire  
And the fire and the rose are one.

(3) "'Explorations', by Lyras", Diane Carey, Dreadnought, page 189.

This is the Sixth Element,  
time crossing time  
Until all stands still  
and we may think.  
Study, but touch.  
Learn and later know.  
Tame the craggy agonies of toil's time.  
Memory and memoring comes late,  
comes shattery, scattery.  
And when all is done, it is not  
to die--  
it is to die well.

(4) The Duty of Bardship, Jennifer Tifft, 8 October 1993.

[...] This is the last verse -

The duty of a bard it is to stand beside thy lord  
Bring honor to his lady, and respect likewise outpoured.  
Thy tongue and wit are weapons even as a naked sword  
And to their use responsible art thou by thine own word.

(5) [](http:)Deconstruction, Jennifer Tifft, 31 October 1997.

(6) Summer Wine, Jennifer Tifft, 5 March 1983

I have sealed the summer in a goblet  
Sere green glass brim full  
A wine of tangled pain and bitter jest  
The ashy dregs I sipped, and bitter still.

Winter has not smoothed the rim  
Nor sweetened stinging daughts that I must drink -  
I fear to drown, to wrap and fold the waves of scarring words  
About my raw, too tender, aching mind,  
Now peeled and stripped of comfort and defense.

Distance is defense from summer still  
A glassy, green-glazed wall against the pain-  
Until I dare, and daring, drink that wine  
And will to make these self-wrought wounds my own.

(7) The Bard's Return, Jennifer Tifft, 20 September 1991

[...] This is the refrain and one of many verses.

Ref: The one who comes is valiant  
The one who comes is brave  
The one who comes defend us all  
Himself he cannot save

The gift of telling truely,  
By word alone to make  
A two-edged blade  
A doom unstayed  
How could the heart but break?  
Summon up from sorrow  
The music like a sword  
Sound the call  
Inspired all,  
&amp; Reap sevenfold reward.

(8) Somebody used this image in one of the stories on the list &amp; it stuck.

(9) Hamlet, "To be or not to be" soliloquy, Shakespeare.

(10) please master, Allen Ginsberg, May 1968.

(11) 'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white' Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Selected Poems page 126-7.

'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;  
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;  
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphory font:  
The fire-fly wakens: wake thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,  
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,  
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves  
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,  
And slips into the bosom of the lake:  
So fold thyself, my dearest thou, and slip  
Into my bosom, and be lost in me.'

(12) [](http:)Ikkaba V Jennifer Tifft, 6 August 1997. This poem is at the end of the story the link leads to.

(13) The Star-Fort, Jennifer Tifft, 9 June 1997

How quiet now, and still,  
Despite the laughing children,  
The busy hum of industry  
across the chuckling, granite-girded shore  
Brick and stone soaking up the peaceful sun,  
The reverent, cheerful touch  
of children's hands  
Not old in absolute, but old to us --  
Battle done; defending now a spirit,  
more than soil.

How quiet here, and still,  
But to the listening ear the silence speaks  
of solemn, ancient things  
And, dreaming in the grass,  
The Star-Fort sleeps  
as children play.

(14) The Angels, John Updike

They are above us all the time  
The good gentlemen, Mozart &amp; Bach,  
Scarlatti and Handel and Brahms,  
Lavishing measures of light down upon us  
Telling us, over and over, there is a realm  
Above this plane of silent compromise.  
They are around us everywhere, the old seers,  
Matisse and Vermeer, Cezanne and Piero,  
Greeting us echoing in subway tunnels,  
Springing like winter flowers from postcards  
Scotch-taped to white kitchen walls,  
Waiting larger than life in shadowy galleries  
To whisper that edges of color  
Lie all about us innocent as grass.  
They are behind, beneath us  
The abysmal books, Shakespeare and Tolstoy,  
The Bible and Proust and Cervantes,  
Burning in memory like leaky furnace doors,  
Minepits of honesty from which we escaped  
With dialated suspicions. Love us, dead thrones,  
Sing us to sleep, awaken our eyes,  
Comfort with terror our mortal afternoons.

(15) [](http:)'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower' Dylan Thomas, The New Oxford Book of English Verse, page 940.

(16) 'Is there an ear, an eye for wisdom', Jennifer Tifft, 11 June, 1997

Is there an ear, an eye for wisdom  
that may percieve  
across the depths  
across the dark  
across the spiraling cycles of the stars?

Etched in the flesh of this world  
will my words still speak  
though I be dust and silence?

Will these stones still sing  
praising  
naming  
explaining  
when we again are gone  
across the depths  
across the dark?

Is there an ear, an eye for wisdom  
that will percieve  
across the spiraling cycles  
the soul of what I needs must say?

(17) Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, George Lucas.

(18) Year's End, Jennifer Tifft, 5 January 1984

Silver bright, blue-gold bladed beauty  
Sharp and edged with pain  
of things too deep or high or Solitaire  
To bear with ease the touch  
Of hand or Heart or mind's caress.

An unsure difference, mind and hands untaught  
With wish and want and need an ache  
Of pleasure to the pitch of pain

Then brought to heights and depths undreamed  
And not alone, though not yet part.

(19) 'Unto my books' Emily Dickinson, Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson's Poems page 153, Number 249(604). Number 248(599) is also relevant. Reference by proximity.

Unto my Books - so good to turn -  
Far ends of tired Days -  
It half endears the Abstinence -  
And Pain - is missed - in Praise -

As Flavors - cheer Retarded Guests  
With Banquettings to be -  
So Spices - stimulate the time  
Till my small Library -

It may be Wilderness - without -  
Far feet of failing Men -  
But Holiday - excludes the night -  
And it is Bells - within -

I thank these Kinsmen of the Shelf -  
Their Countenances Kid  
Enamor - in Prospective -  
And satisfy - obtained -

 

248(599) Page 152

There is a pain - so utter -  
It swallows substance up -  
Then covers the Abyss with Trance -  
So Memory can step  
Around - across - upon it -  
As one within a Swoon -  
Goes safely - where an open eye -  
Would drop Him - Bone by Bone.

(20) The last line of 'Conquest' by Hth.

(21) When You Are Old, William Butler Yeats, William Butler Yeats, The Last Romantic, page 21.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,  
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,  
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look  
Your eyes once had, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,  
And loved your beauty with love false or true,  
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,  
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,  
Murmer, a little sadly, how Love fled  
And paced upon the mountains overhead  
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

 

(22)'After great pain' Emily Dickinson, Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson's Poems page 73.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -  
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -  
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,  
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round -  
A Wooden way  
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -  
Regardless grown,  
A Quartz contenment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead -  
Remembered, if outlived,  
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -  
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -

(23) 'JAOA - Ceremonies', BlackRose.

(24) This is derived from a .sig quote I can no longer find, and thus cannot properly attribute. The original quote is (approx):"We have tamed the lightning, and used it to make sand think."


End file.
